Disproportionate Retribution/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • In Winx Club, Darcy and Stormy both pull this; Darcy attempts to murder Musa simply for being interested in Riven (who she didn't even like) and after Musa beats Stormy one on one she disguises herself, concocts an elaborate revenge plot, and attempts to kill Musa's dad.
  • Hey Arnold!: In the episode "False Alarm" Curly tried to get Eugene expelled from school simply because he ruined his favorite pencil.
    • "Curly Snaps". Curly locks himself in Principal Wartz's office, throws dodgeballs at everyone he sees, and has a big list of demands just because he DIDN'T GET TO BE BALL MONITOR THAT WEEK... They really should have sent him to Helga's therapist at that point. Dude is definitely unhinged.
  • After some heartwarming Epiphany Therapy, The Dragon and Quirky Miniboss Squad of Avatar: The Last Airbender went on to completely trash (and maybe burn down!) the house of someone who had mildly "insulted" them by kicking Zuko out of his party for hurling a guy into his grandma's vase, and being afraid of Azula. Hey, they are villains.
    • Also there's Fire Lord Ozai's solution to minor rebellions in the conquered Earth Kingdom. Because burning the entire continent to the ground is clearly a reasonable response.
    • Ozai seems to be a fan of this. Your thirteen-year-old son disagrees with one of your general's plan that'll sacrifice a ton of loyal Cannon Fodder? He obviously deserves to be permanently disfigured and kicked out of the country on a Snipe Hunt.
    • Azula embodies this trope after her Villainous Breakdown. Forgot to remove a cherry pit? Banished! Didn't arrive as quickly as Azula wanted you to? Banished! Do your duty as an advisors and actually advise Azula? Agni Kai! Both of you aren't firebenders and can't Agni Kai? Okay, one of you is banished. That's her definition of being exceedingly merciful.
    • Then again, this seems to run in the family. Fire Lord Azulon's response to Ozai wanting the throne over his brother Iroh after Iroh's only heir has died? Telling him to kill his own son so he can feel what it's like to lose his firstborn. Zuko is definitely the Butt Monkey of this family.
    • Ty Lee initially doesn't want to leave the circus to accompany Azula, since she really loves her new life. Azula not-so-subtly ensures that Ty Lee's working conditions will get much, much, much, much more dangerous. Ty Lee gets the message.
  • Nearly every Villain of the Week in Miraculous Ladybug does this. One of them is cited by a police officer for feeding pigeons (which is, indeed, illegal in Paris), so he comes back and kidnaps all of them and traps them in a cage. One is humiliated in class by the school bully, so she send spinning razor blades at her. And more often than not, Paris is nearly destroyed in the process. Justified, of course, as Hawk Moth takes whatever grudge they have and uses the akumas to amplify it a hundredfold.
  • Subverted in The Powerpuff Girls, in which after being criticized by a temp that he relies on the girls way too much, the Mayor promptly reaches for the hotline to have the girls beat her up. About midway, he finally gets it and hangs the phone up.
    • Incidentally the episode becomes more or less about this trope as the mayor compensates by flying around in a hot air balloon punishing any and all crimes he sees, (whether actual or not) from robbery to jay walking with an extendable boxing glove to the face.
    • In another episode, the Girls' next door neighbours, the Smiths, are led by the mother to become supervillains, destroy the Girls home, and try to kill them, because she was angry at them ruining the dinner party she had invited them to (which by the way, they did because they were trying to stop Mr. Smith, who had become a villain because he was bored with his average suburban life, from melting the Professor's head!). The daughter of the family also got into it because the Girls had accidentally lost her jacks. The Girls Lampshade Hanging this when, after Mrs. Smith's Motive Rant, Blossom simply says "That's not a good reason at all!" before beating the Smiths up.
    • In "Bubblevicious", upon proving she can be as strong and aggressive as her sisters by defeating the highest-level monsters in their training simulator, Bubbles begins to attack people for the smallest crimes such as littering and jaywalking.
  • From The Incredibles 2, the Big Bad hypnotizes a pizza delivery man and forces him to be her stand in, which results in ElasticGirl beating up and arresting an innocent man; the villain claims she did this because a pizza he delivered was cold.
  • Señor Senior, Sr. (and his son, Señor Senior, Jr.) was kicked out of an ultra-exclusive club for billionaires because of their embarrassing losses to Kim Possible. Senior's idea: freeze them all solid with a stolen cryogenic device. As he puts it, "true villains are characterized by disproportionate revenge, Junior."
    • Kim does this in the movie where only the writer's intervention stopped her from killing Shego. Keep in mind that this was in response to Shego making a crack about kidnapping her prom date. Who turned out to be a synthodrone who was in on it. Because she was ordered to by Drakken. As part of a scheme she knew nothing about until the very end. She didn't even take out her revenge on the right person: Drakken was behind the whole thing. Shego was Just Following Orders as always.
  • In The Venture Brothers episode "Past Tense", Dr. Venture, Brock, Mr. White, and Baron Underbheit are kidnapped by an old acquaintance, Mike Sorayama, who has devised a complex revenge plot with the intention of killing them all... in vengeance for a variety of minor pranks they all played on him in college, most of which revolved around his pathetic unrequited crush on a girl called Leslie Cohen. It turns out that Venture didn't even do what Mike claims he did (sleep with the girl—although Brock did), although he does lampshade the overall ludicrousness of Mike's obsessive vendetta with what he thinks Mike blames him for:

Doctor Venture: Oh come on! You're gonna kill me for having fake sex on graph paper with a girl who barely spoke to you in real life?!

    • Also there is the Monarch's yet to be explained vendetta against Doctor Venture. Even Doctor Venture doesn't know why the Monarch wants him dead.
    • Then there's Dr. Orpheus, who absolutely excels at this trope. Two rednecks decided to tease him about his appearance, so he trapped their spirits in a small Homeboy figurine, which he now keeps on his car dashboard. In another instance, he predicts Action Man's exact date and cause of death, though to be fair the guy did attack him without provocation and put a bullet in his shoulder before the mix-up was resolved.
    • Brock Samson has a tendency to murder or brutalize people who don't show him respect. He lost his college football scholarship when he accidentally killed his own QB for not giving him the ball. He gets incredibly frustrated when either his license to kill has expired or the insulter is a member of a protected group, like women or children... though he will make an exception for Molotov Cocktease.
    • Dr. Mrs. The Monarch explains The Guild's policy of Disproportionate Retribution to Jonas Venture, Jr. in "The Lepidopterists".

Dr. Mrs. The Monarch: You throw a rock, The Guild throws a knife, you throw a knife, they come to your house when you're sleeping and murder your family.

    • Baron Von Undherbeit, when he was the ruler of his own country, had no prisons. Any violation of the law met the death penalty.
  • Invader Zim is pretty much comprised of this trope. Many episodes show Zim taking a small thing way too serious and often goes too far to get even.
    • A prime example would be where Zim, suspecting that Dib has thrown a muffin at his head, kidnaps Dib and puts him into a deeply depressing Mind Screw dream-state in order to gather evidence. Only after complete mental destruction does Zim go ahead with the proportionate retribution of chucking a muffin at Dib's head.
    • All this goes without even mentioning Gaz, who had this as her trademark trope. Good luck finding a Gaz line that doesn't have something to do with inflicting revenge in the most painful and absurd way possible, often for petty and trivial reasons, such as preventing Dib from revealing evidence of Zim being an alien simply because Dib ate the last slice of pizza.
  • Eric Cartman is the patron saint of this trope.
    • In "Scott Tenorman Must Die", Scott cheats Cartman out of $16.12, makes him beg for the money back (in a very humiliating fashion), burns the money in front of him, then tapes Cartman begging for his money and shows it to the entire town of South Park. So after more mundane revenge pranks fail, Cartman lures Scott's parents to their deaths, steals the bodies, grinds them up, uses the meat to make chili, then makes Scott eat the chili. He also gets Scott's favorite band to laugh at him as he cries, while Cartman laps the tears up right off his face. Granted, Scott acted really dickish to Cartman, but even so...
    • Of course, Scott Tenorman eventually would prove the old Klingon proverb that, yes, revenge is a dish Best Served Cold, though considering what he was put through, that revenge might have been considered proportionate..
    • One time Cartman tied a boy's ankle to the flag pole, gave him a hacksaw and told him he had poisoned his milk, and the only way to get the antidote was hacking off his own leg. The reason for this, you might ask? The boy called Cartman "Chubby".
    • Most people would agree that laughing at someone getting AIDS is definitely a Jerkass move. Unfortunately, this is Kyle who does it and the person provoked is Eric Cartman. Cartman decides to share it because his nemesis laughed at him.
    • Quite a few characters get this inflicted upon them, especially Stan. (Example: He just expresses his opinion about not wanting to vote for either of two joke candidates and this gets him threatened, kicked out of town, and almost killed, in that order.)
      • Kyle as well, particularly in recent seasons. Don't read Apple EULA? Have fun being part of a Human Centipede. He also gets AIDS from Cartman for laughing, loses a bet and is forced to suck (at least imagined to) Cartman's balls. Oh fuck, just Cartman to Kyle in general is a lot of this.
    • An adult movie is making your kids say naughty workds. THIS MEANS WAR!!!
  • The Mysterons of Captain Scarlet decide that, having had their city destroyed, they're going to wipe out all life on earth. Which seems a bit silly really, given they managed to rebuild the city in seconds, but hey. They've watched us for centuries, they know best, right?
  • In the first part of The Fairly OddParents Wishology after Timmy uses the Tooth Fairy's factory to transport himself instead of a quarter to under a pillow, the boy who was lying on the pillow woke up and accused Timmy of stealing his quarter. Shortly after, Timmy was being chased by the police and wanted posters of him were placed everywhere. For some reason, stealing a quarter is just as bad as breaking a priceless statue if not worse.
    • Then there's the matter of the last scene, or rather next to last scene, in "Bad Heir Day", an otherwise touching episode. Poof, who incidentally bounced out of the stroller wound up with Crocker for a time. Timmy does everything he can to find his little brother and quickly becomes a Badly-Battered Babysitter. Poof arrived home without a scratch and Timmy came in clothes torn, scratched and burned. When he explains what happens Wanda gives him No Sympathy and poofs Timmy BACK into the same rabid alligator pit that he was in earlier while trying to find Poof. Apparently, someone who loses a child accidentally, even if they go through horrendous things to bring them back safely deserves to be nearly killed, if not actually. Add to this the fact that Poof is immortal while Timmy is human, as well as a child himself, adds a Fridge Horror element to it if you think too long about it!
  • Family Guy. Peter tickles Lois playfully who keeps telling him to stop while laughing. She then breaks his nose with a frying pan. Peter lampshades it:

Peter: I tickle you, you hit me in the face with a frying pan?!
 Lois: I told you to stop.
Peter: I taste blood!
Lois: Well there's a lot of it.

    • And there's also his feud with Ernie the giant chicken. Peter then tries to kill Ernie just because he gave him a coupon that turned out to be bad. Whether Ernie knew this or not is hard to say, but since then, every confrontation between them has erupted into a violent, brutal, bloody fight that usually wrecks half the city.
      • And, later, refusing to let him pick up the check, spoiling any chance of a truce.
    • While not as violent as the fights between Ernie and Peter, Ernie's wife once picked a fight with Lois after Ernie simply told Lois "us redheads have to stick together", as a joke. To his credit, Ernie tried to talk them out of it.
    • Joyce Kinney, a news anchor at Quahog News, revealed on the show that Lois starred in a porno in retaliation for a prank she pulled when they were in high school.
      • Granted, said prank was a Carrie-style humiliation.
    • Played with when Peter throws acid in the face of a New Yorker because he said the Patriots suck. He meant to splash holy water in his face but there was a mix-up.
    • One episode has a former hot dog eating champion attempting to strangle Chris to death just because Chris beat him in the competition, which caused the former champion to lose his honor.
  • There was an episode of Johnny Bravo where the titular character got 40 life sentences for littering. It turns out that he wasn't really the one who littered.
    • Inverted in an episode, where stealing his mother's car to use in a race meant a week's worth of chores for Johnny (and for Carl, who helped Johnny steal it and added illegal technology to it, to help him).

Bunny: Grand theft auto in my house means chores for a week!

  • Disney's Sleeping Beauty. The curse was put on her for one stated reason - because the witch wasn't invited to the birthday party. Now THAT is Disproportionate Retribution done right!
  • Another Disney example: In Aladdin, the fruit vendor nearly cuts off Jasmine's hand for stealing an apple. That she didn't even steal for herself. An example of Truth in Television.
    • Well, the penalty is made so the thief won't be able to steal ever again, but its usually done by the executioner.
      • It's also so that the thief is denied entry to Heaven or the afterlife, as in some religions you must be buried with all of your parts present to do so.
      • Actually, what she did isn't formally defined as theft under shari'a, because she didn't even try to sneak. Even if he'd produced the requisite witnesses, a functioning religious court wouldn't have cut off her hand. (Modern Iran can be...different.) Maybe levied a fine. But since Agrabah is a nonexistent principality, I can't say what its secular laws would have been, and those are the ones that would have actually come into play.
    • An even worse example of a potential disproportionate retribution, imagine what would've happened to the vendor if Aladdin hadn't stopped him and word got out that he cut off the hand of the princess...
  • On Phineas and Ferb, most of Dr. Doofensmirtz's evil schemes run on this. In one episode, Doofenshmirtz tracks down a bully who used to kick sand in his face and tries to bury his entire house in sand.
    • Pinky the Chihuahua's rival goes to the store to buy Stiff Beauty hair spray, which she finds out has been discontinued. After a beat, she zaps the messenger into another dimension.
    • Doof also teleported a guy to another dimension because he hit on his daughter.
  • On SpongeBob SquarePants, Squidward does this in "Fools in April" and "Funny Pants", as well as a number of other episodes, generally because Spongebob was doing something to amuse himself or bystanders, but it annoyed him.
    • Squidward himself tends to be a target for Disproportionate Retribution himself. The earliest example in "Reef Blower": Squidward brushes a clam shell, off of his otherwise spotless lawn, onto Spongebob's lawn. By the end of the episode Squidward's yard is a mess of dirt and debris.
      • To be fair, the "Reef Blower" example was due to Spongebob's oblivious bumbling leading to a chain reaction of bad luck for Squidward rather than a deliberate retaliation.
  • A harmless version in the X-Men Evolution Christmas Episode had Spyke and his father throw a couple of snowballs at Storm (with poor accuracy). Storm logically responds by creating a small snowstorm to show them why one should never pick a snowball fight with someone who can control the weather.
  • In the second episode of the Mega Man cartoon, Roll was attacked by a female cosmetics robot that strapped her to a chair and gave her a bad facial. Megaman's response was to throw a tube of makeup at the robot, giving her an equally bad facial. Roll's response when freed was to cut her in half, then vacuum her face off.
  • Parodied on Robot Chicken. A guy, sick of rush hour traffic, goes insane and transforms his car into a rolling death machine. He heads to work the next day... only to find himself all alone on the road due to a Jewish bank holiday.
  • Lucius on Jimmy Two-Shoes frequently does this, including threatening to dunk the main characters in lave for releasing an old home movie of him and leveling a hair salon for messing up his horns.
  • In an episode of Adventure Time, Jake has a witch punish him by taking away his magical powers and gives him the body of a fat baby. The reason she did so was because he ate one of her doughnuts. Later, she does the same thing to a bagel. The bagel's crime? Not being a doughnut.
    • In Adventure Time, the earl of Lemongrab has some... er, interesting concepts when it comes to punishing those who do wrong. Making a mess? Thirty days in the dungeon. Asking questions? Thirty-TWO days in the dungeon. Refusing to clean up mess, or asking who exactly Lemongrab is talking to? Three hours dungeon. Harmless prank? Seven years dungeon, no trials. Assuring Lemongrab that the prank was harmless? Twelve years dungeon. Elaborate, painful prank involving spicy food? ONE MILLION YEARS DUNGEON!!! (Of course, Lemongrab isn't evil- he's just young, angry, and a bit of an idiot.)
      • In Adventure Time, PB and Finn decide to play a harmless prank on the earl of Lemongrab- basically, they leave a sign beside his bed that says "YOU REALLY SMELL LIKE DOG BUNS." How does the earl react? He clenches his fists, starts shaking, and opens up his mouth wide to scream loudly in sheer outrage for several seconds. And how does he attempt to punish those responsible? Round up EVERYONE in the castle, to sentence them to seven years in the dungeon, no trials!
    • In one episode a squirrel went crazy and attacks Jake because he wouldn't reply to the emails he sent to him, and doesn't remember him.
    • Princess Bubblegums vendetta over Duke of Nut's was caused because he ate her pudding. Even Finn finds her hatred over him to be bordering on psychotic.
  • A lot of the complaints people have over Tom and Jerry is Jerry's tendency to do this to Tom.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog
    • Supposedly, the reason Katz has such a vindictive streak against Muriel is because his recipes always lose to hers in the Nowhere Sweet Stuff Contest every year.
    • There's one episode in which Eustace calls on a gang of Courage's worst nemeses to kill him, just because the dog got a blanket he wanted for himself.
  • The Hunter vows revenge on Demona, a vow that lasts through a thousand years, the role of the Hunter being passed down through the generations. What was her crime? Lashing out and scarring the face of the first Hunter when he came upon her stealing food. Granted, the fact that she didn't even consider him worth remembering before he began his hunt probably didn't help, but still, DAMN.
    • Gargoyles also averts (inverts?) this in the form of Vinnie Gregarino. This guy loses at least two jobs, a motorcycle, his driver's license and probably a lot of his reputation because of the Gargoyles' actions. He spends most of the episode "Vendettas" chasing Goliath with a custom-built weapon called "Mr. Carter", or "Mr. C.", finally shooting him in the face at point-blank range just after the climax of a big battle that had Goliath's attention all night. Fortunately, "Mr. Carter" only shoots cream pies, and Vinnie walked away very satisfied with himself, leaving a confused Goliath and Hudson to wonder who he was. Vinnie is notably the only character in the entire series to get vengeance to his satisfaction.
  • In the Easter special Here Comes Peter Cottontail, the villainous Irontail's hatred of children stems from an incident when one child with rollerskates ran over his tail, forcing him to replace it with a metal prosthetic one. While such an injury might indeed be traumatic to a rabbit, Irontail seems far more intent on revenge than anything else. When someone suggests it was an accident, Irontail doesn't deny it; he simply doesn't care.
  • In the first episode of Men in Black: The Series, Jay runs afoul of a Hive Mind race that wants him dead for accidentally killing one of their own. When Kay blows his nose and shows them the mucus-covered handkerchief, they decide to let Jay go and take him instead.
  • The Simpsons does this a lot, but the clearest case of this is in "Curse of the Flying Hellfish". When Burns takes old paintings from Abe Simpson at gunpoint, and Bart calls Burns a coward and an embarrassment to the name Hellfish, Burns points the gun at Bart's head; Abe says Burns can take the art, just not hurt the boy; Burns remarks that he would rather do both, and kicks Bart into the empty case so hard that it ends up falling into the water, and then Burns boats away, saying "so long, Sarge, see you at the reunion in November!" Seeing as how Burns could have taken the art without hurting the boy, trying to drown him was either in response to his insults or For the Evulz.
    • Another good example is the Springfield-Shelbyville rivalry, summed up by Lisa.

"They built a mini-mall, so we built an even bigger mini-mall. They made the world's largest pizza, so we burned down their city hall."

Quimby: I bet I'll get blamed for this.

    • Ned Flanders' crusade to get Kent Brockman fired after swearing on public television, even though Brockman apologised for it a few seconds later and nobody was really watching the news when he swore. Ned even lampshaded it, when his sons asked him what he's doing.

Imploring people I never met to pressure a government with better things to do to punish a man who meant no harm for something nobody even saw! That's what I'm doing!

    • In "Krusty Gets Kancelled", Snake throws an empty Duff can out of his truck, and to get revenge, Bette Midler lobs the can back at him, and causes his truck to spin off the road and explode.

"I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS, MIDLER!"

    • Itchy and Scratchy had one in "You Kent Always Say What You Want" (according to Krusty's narrative). Itchy built a trap involving a lady made of dynamite for Scratchy, and later juggled his three remaining body parts (his head, his heart, and his leg)

Krusty: (narrating) That's what you get for, I don't know, messing with my wife.

    • In the same episode, Lindsay Naegle fired Brockman for having Cocaine in his coffee, even when Brockman explained that it was actually Splenda, and it is also implied that she was actually using that as an excuse to fire him even when it was really just out of anger for his swearing on the air. The FCC also landed the entire Channel 6 station with a $10,000,000 fine just because Kent Brockman uttered a swear word. Sure, the swear was implied to be the worst one in the English language, but still, $10,000,000 is far too much even for that.
    • "The Boys Of Bummer" contains probably one of the worst examples in fiction. When Bart screws up at a baseball game and costs Springfield the Little League Championship, everyone makes him pay dearly (only Marge stood by him). In fact, it drives poor Bart to attempt suicide. What did they fo next? They kept on at it. It only took Marge to set things straight.
    • "The Good, The Sad and the Drugly". After Bart forgets to visit Milhouse during his suspension due to spending time with Jenny, Milhouse invades Bart and follows him everywhere, trying to force his anger into his life as harsh as possible, until he corners Bart, forcing him to admit to Jenny that he is not who she thinks he is. This ends up with Jenny dumping Bart and leaving him a crying mess.
    • Another Treehouse of Horror episode has Bart trying to warn everyone about the gremlin on the side of the bus, sabotaging the vehicle. Even though he's eventually proven to be right (and even gets rid of the gremlin himself,) Skinner still decides his conduct was unacceptable, and naturally a suitable punishment would be for him to spend the rest of his life in an insane asylum.
    • In the episode "The Spy Who Learned Me", Bart plots revenge on the school bully, Nelson, by giving him coupons for a month's worth of fast food for free. Nelson quickly gets addicted to the junk food and becomes so obese that he becomes too lazy to push people around. The reason for this act by Bart? He got sick of Nelson taking his lunch money.
  • In the Gravity Falls episode "The Inconveniencing", this is the key to figuring out the Monster of the Week's Ghostly Goals At first, they seem to have no reason to inflict horrible fates upon Wendy's friends other that malicious spite, but Dipper realizes this contradicts the information in the Journal claiming that ghosts "always have a reason". As it turns out, the ghostly store owners believe Teens Are Monsters, and for good reason: they died of heart attacks after a rowdy bunch of teens tormented them with loud rap music.
  • Roger of American Dad IS this trope, committing extremely intricate plots for Revenge that traumatise or outright destroy the life of a fellow that commits some minor offense towards him. He managed to convince Steve he was adopted after eating a cookie he claimed was his, he labelled Francine a former mental patient to houseguests for compromising one of his dress-up acts (he did NOT study Economics!), and once tried to destroy the entire planet over an insult issued from Stan though admittedly didn't get far with that one. And this is just for petty offenses; for the more criminal act of buying an expensive ring using his credit account, Roger actively proceeds to destroy the perpetrator's life in every manner possible, performing acts that cost him his job, his girlfriend, and later attempting to destroy all his possessions. This leads to complications when said perpetrator turns out to be a split personality formed from Roger's few redeeming aspects - and when said split personality hires a bounty hunter to kill Roger for ruining his life.
    • Roger proceeded to take this trope Up to Eleven in a season 7 episode where he goes on to kill five people over twenty dollars. During the episode, he mentions that the week before, he killed six people over nineteen dollars.
    • Steve also extracted revenge on three of the most popular girls in his high school when they slandered his girlfriend's reputation and had the lead cheerleader win the student body president because of it. Steve goes out of his way to do the following:
      • Tie the school's buffalo mascot on the pole of a traffic light so one of the popular girls would drive under it while giving the animal a huge amount of laxatives, causing it to dump its "load" all over her.
      • Distract a surgeon giving liposuction to one of the girls so he can put the procedure in reverse, causing her leg to balloon up with excess fat so she looks like a freak.
      • Steal the lead girl's teddy bear and paying a hooker to do sexual stuff to it and then return the bear so the girl contracts herpes.
  • Happens quite often in Futurama, most frequently by Lrr and the Omicronians. Basically every time he shows up, something new and more ridiculous happens: The first appearance has him invading the Earth because his favorite (thousand-year-old) TV show was knocked off the air, and later tries to destroy the Planet Express ship for bringing sweetheart candy to their planet. "These candies are chalky and unpleasant!"
    • To be fair - this concept of "wuv" confused and infuriated them.
    • In their first appearance, they demanded that the season finale of a thousand year old television show be aired again or he would increase earth's temperature by "one million degrees a day... for five days!"
    • When Bender dumps toxic waste into the sewers, the mutants kidnap him, as well as Fry and Leela, who just happened to be with him at the time. The waste Bender dumped was so bright that it allowed the mutants to see how ugly they were. The mutants decide to punish all three of them by permanently mutating their DNA and then beating them up. Furthermore, when the trio tries to escape and are caught after a short chase, they decide to go for the death penalty instead.
    • In the episode "Bendless Love", the robots at the girder factory are striking because management refused their request to switch casual Friday to Monday. Of course, the management does this too, as they are willing to pay scabs ten times the regular salary rather than agree to this simple demand.
  • When Hank Hill saw his niece getting harassed by a golfer, he wanted the guy to pay. His usual method is to kick someone's ass, but this time he was especially pissed. So he threw the guy in a dolphin pool and had the dolphin rape the guy. The moral of the story is: don't piss Hank off (either that, or don't harass his niece in front of him). It was also a "two birds one stone" scenario since he wanted the raping dolphin removed from the club but had signed a nondisclosure agreement that kept him from complaining about it himself.
  • In Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, after Kevin wrecks one of Eddy's scams by merely picking up a soccer ball, Eddy spends the rest of the episode trying to enact revenge. Edd is not amused.
    • In the infamous If It Smells Like An Ed, Eddy gives Jimmy a wedgie, resulting in all the kids laughing at him. Jimmy then frames ALL THREE Eds for ruining his Friendship Day Celebrations, sends the Eds on a wild goose chase to find the real culprit, ending with the Eds having fruit thrown at them by the kids and being dragged off by the Kankers to be raped.
  • In the Quack Pack episode "The Real Mighty Ducks", Donald wants Huey, Dewey, and Louie to clean their room, but they head over to Ludwig Von Drake's lab instead. They use one of his inventions to become Super Heroes. Their room, still a mess, Donald goes to Von Drake's lab and becomes a Super Villain, The Duck Of Doom, who, still desperate for the boys to clean their room, goes on to tangle up a freeway, drain a lake, paint glasses on Mt.Rushmore, destroy every television set in existence, and eventually destroys the entire universe. It doesn't matter how many times he told them to do it, no bedroom is ever that untidy. Evil Is Petty indeed.
  • Dan Vs. lives and breathes this trope. Each episode is centered on Dan's need to get back at someone, or something, for a perceived slight.
  • Joker does this in Batman the Animated Series. Regularly.
    • * In the episode which introduces Poison Ivy, she tries to kill Harvey Dent for building a corrections facility on top of a field containing a flower that was endangered. There is no evidence he knew about the endangered flower. She saved the flower before trying to kill him, anyway. Maybe he should've done an ecological survey to check for endangered species and done an environmental impact statement before starting construction, but she could've tried telling him there was an endangered flower before he started building to see if he would alter his plans in response.
      • She gets another one when she runs a spa and send out invitations to millionaires who have done some environmental wrong, turning them into living plants with her treatment. She targets Bruce when his company was planning on tearing down a forest for building space...except Bruce had found out and stopped the plans long beforehand and she never bothered to look further into this. What's more when Bruce lets his butler Alfred and his girlfriend go in his place as a vacation, Ivy figures she'll make due with him cause someone gotta be punished.
    • Temple Fugate developed an obsessive, murderous grudge against Mayor Hamilton Hill...because when he was a lawyer, Hill suggested Fugate take his coffee break a little later to help him relax for a lawsuit against his company, which resulted in a series of accidents making him late, which resulted in him losing the suit.
  • Subverted in one episode of Muppet Babies when, during a scene where Miss Piggy imagines herself as Queen Elizabeth I, Fozzie tells a crappy joke. Miss Piggy is not amused and puts him in the stocks. He asks if he's headed for fifty lashes for his crappy joke, and Miss Piggy snarls, "No, it's worse than that." Then, much to Fozzie's surprise...
  • Marvin The Martian was going to blow up the Earth because it obstructed his view of the planet Venus.
  • In Thundercats 2011 A stockaded Lizard, begging for mercy, tells Catfolk prince Lion-O that he and his fellow prisoner were only scavenging Thundera's crops when captured and made slaves of the Cats. When Lion-O points this out to a Powder Keg Crowd harassing them, he's misinterpreted and they quickly become an Angry Mob calling for the Lizards' deaths.
  • In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic some ponies appear to be under the impression that Princess Celestia practices this. She does not.
    • Nightmare Moon's vow to bring about The Night That Never Ends was because her pony subjects enjoyed the daytime her sister brought, but didn't appreciate the nights she created.
    • It's a highly contested point among the fandom, if the mane 5's actions in the episode "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" went too far in simply trying to humble Dash a little.
    • Fluttershy may have gone a little too far when applying her assertiveness training in "Putting Your Hoof Down".
  • Already known for his Hair-Trigger Temper, Burgermeister Meisterburger from Santa Claus is Comin' to Town trips on a toy duck and orders all toys banned and confiscated in the Sombertown city limits.
  • In The Looney Tunes Show, Porky takes some of Daffy's french fries because he thinks they're for the table. Daffy goes into a Heroic BSOD and ends his friendship with Porky, calling him "garbage". It turns out that the fries were, in fact, for the table. Incidentally, Daffy somehow sees no problem with taking Porky's pizza.
  • In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, a young Ivo Robotnik tries to woo a girl he loved by by strangling his Romantic Rival with a robotic snake and is expelled. What does Robotnik do? Start his world conquest schemes.
  • The Imagine Spot sequences in Angela Anaconda are all about this, with Angela fantasizing about subjecting those who have ticked her off - usually Nanette - to horrific punishments that are way out of proportion to what they've done. One notorious example was in "The Substitute", where Angela fantasizes about having Nanette and her brothers cooked and served to her in a restaurant.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Marvin the Martian was going to blow up the Earth because it obstructed his view of the planet Venus. And he spent two millennia building the weapon he was planning to use to do it, no less.
    • One rather notorious example was in "Rhapsody Rabbit". Bugs is about to play a piano in a large, crowded concert hall, when a rude, offstage audience member starts coughing and hacking loudly just as Bugs is poised to play. When it happens a second time, Bugs pulls a revolver out of his tailcoat and shoots him. Bugs is more merciful in "Baton Bunny" (where the plot is similar) where a similar incident occurs; he hold up a sign saying "Throw the Bum Out!" and someone does.
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